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Days on Earth are getting longer, a team of experts at Durham University and the UK’s Nautical Almanac Office has concluded, as they predict in the future there will be 25 hours in a day.
Researchers looked at historical records of eclipses and other celestial events from 720BC on.
“It’s a very slow process,” retired astronomer and study lead co-author Leslie Morrison said in the report.
Earlier studies indicated that it takes about 5.2 million years to add one minute to every day.
However, Morrison insists that their data showed that Earth’s orbit is not slowing as rapidly as first anticipated.
“These estimates are approximate, because the geophysical forces operating on the Earth’s rotation will not necessarily be constant over such a long period of time,” he explained.
Apart from looking back at previous celestial observations, the team also referred to the gravitational theories about the movement of Earth around the Sun, as well as the Moon around Earth, in order to clarify the timing of future eclipses.
Upon collation, the group compared previous observations recorded by ancient Babylonians, Chinese, Greeks, Arabs and medieval Europeans.
“For example, the Babylonian tablets, which are written in cuneiform script, are stored at the British Museum and have been decoded by experts there and elsewhere,” Morrison said.
The team has yet to determine an exact timeline of the possible shift, but Morrison said it could still be influenced by several factors, including Earth’s altering shape due to shrinking polar ice cap, electro-magnetic interactions between the mantle and core, and changes in the sea level.
Agencies/Canadajournal
